Aid Agencies in Afghanistan Fear Reversals After U.S. Exit

An Afghan student at the Turquoise Mountain Institute in Kabul displayed his ceramics at an exhibition financed in part by United States Agency for International Development.Credit
Bryan Denton for The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — Even as President Hamid Karzai beseeched nations at a conference in Germany on Monday to continue aid to Afghanistan for another decade, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is already being felt among civilian aid workers, raising anxieties that Afghanistan will be abandoned and that the hard-earned development gains will be reversed.

The United States, which provides two-thirds of all development assistance in Afghanistan, slashed its $4 billion aid budget to $2 billion in the 2011 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. The budget for 2012, being considered in Congress, may be cut further.

CARE, which is deeply involved in setting up schools and improving life for Afghan women, has lost 80 percent of its budget here. As a result, it has had to lay off 400 of its 900 employees in Afghanistan, only a tenth of whom are non-Afghan staff members, according to the group’s country director, Brian Cavanagh. Other American-based charities that are suffering steep cuts are Mercy Corps and the International Rescue Committee.

So far the $2 billion decrease in aid over the past year has not resulted in cutbacks of continuing programs, according to a senior American official, because unspent money from previous years is still available, cushioning the blow.

And some aid workers say the cutbacks may not turn out to be devastating, at least in the short run, because some agencies had been unable to spend money quickly when large new amounts of aid came pouring in over recent years. Some Western donors have also indicated misgivings about the Afghan government’s ability to spend aid money efficiently and without corruption.

But the recent cutbacks at a number of charities have struck a nerve here and raised concerns about the long-term implications, especially because aid work has always been emphasized as a critical part of the Americans’ long-term counterinsurgency strategy. The timing has only exacerbated those worries, coming as the American troop withdrawal has gotten under way: 10,000 troops are due to withdraw by the end of December, and 4,000 of those have already left, according to a senior NATO official.

“There is a fear that all this could be cut and Afghanistan could be left alone as it was in the ’90s, which will have very bad consequences this time,” said Hashim Mayar, a special adviser to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, which represents many of the major relief groups in Afghanistan. “What we have gained should not be lost.”

Programs that have closed this year were already coming to the end of their contracts, the American official said. The aid groups disputed that, however, saying they had hoped to renew them.

“Our hope is that what we will be able to do is continue on what we call a soft-landing approach, a gradual decline over time,” the official said, speaking anonymously in line with his agency’s policy. “We’ll see what comes forth from the Congressional process.”

CARE’s biggest loss was the shutdown of an education program it ran in remote areas for 21,000 boys and girls; hundreds of small schools were closed, with 5,000 students, mostly girls, unable to find alternatives, said Jennifer Rowell, head of advocacy for CARE here. Some of the schools were turned over to the Afghan Ministry of Education, but it could not take all of them. Girls are less likely to be allowed to travel long distances to another school.

Mercy Corps, another major American-based aid organization, has had a $32 million “Cash for Work” program in northern Afghanistan brought to an end. And the International Rescue Committee’s budget for Afghanistan next year is only $9.5 million, compared with $18 million last year, although the agency is still hopeful it can cover the shortfall.

All are troubling losses in a country where rampant unemployment, especially in more remote areas, is seen as a real security risk.

“Aid is decreasing very rapidly and markedly,” said the International Rescue Committee’s country director, Nigel Jenkins. “We’re trying to move to areas where money is still available.” That would mean, for instance, starting projects in more dangerous parts of Afghanistan, like Kandahar and Helmand Provinces in the south, rather than other poorer areas, he said.

Aid cutbacks come as Afghanistan has instituted the second stage of its transition plan, taking over responsibility for security in 24 provinces or cities, areas accounting for half the country’s population. In theory, that is meant to make it possible for the United States and its coalition partners to begin stepping up their withdrawal of forces, which is meant to be completed by 2014.

Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan government’s transition chief, has said it hopes to see a “transition dividend,” in which those countries that benefit by reducing their military spending would return part of that savings to Afghanistan by increasing aid for reconstruction and development.

At a time of economic crisis in Europe and America, that may prove politically unpopular.

Many aid groups, even those hard hit by the cutbacks, are not sure they are devastating losses, at least in the short term. In an effort to use aid money to help the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, money sometimes poured in faster than it could be spent. Now, at least, many hope it will be spent more effectively.

“Within the aid community there’s a general feeling that less could actually be better, because the amount of money poured into Afghanistan is absolutely ridiculous and not sustainable,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Last year there were huge amounts of development money, but there is no question that not much of that has trickled down to those who were in need.”

Referring to nongovernmental organizations, Mercy Corps’ departing director for Afghanistan, Christine Mulligan, said: “You can do more with less. Will you see a lot of NGOs lamenting the budget cuts? Maybe not. That two billion was almost like new money, and it was all about the burn rate, how much they could spend and how quickly, not what they could do for people.”

American officials and many traditional nongovernmental groups have been at odds in recent years over the American strategy of concentrating development aid in conflict areas, as an avowed part of the military’s counterinsurgency strategy. Some derided it as the “weaponization of aid,” and many charitable groups refused to take on projects in conflict areas, leading to an American reliance on mostly for-profit private contractors.

“While we were looking at needs, they were looking at how much money they could get out of it,” Mr. Jenkins said.

A report in June by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee noted that 81 percent of the United States Agency for International Development budget in the 2011 fiscal year was spent in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the insurgency was strongest and the American troop presence greatest, while poverty and lack of development has been worse elsewhere.

“What we say is that really development and security must go hand in hand,” the American official said. “I understand that there’s concern about things such as weaponization of development or whatnot, but we would posit that really the two need to go hand in hand.”

The large outlays of the past two years, however, were aimed at stabilization, a term the military uses to mean rapid-fix projects intended to undermine insurgents and deliver local government services, for instance. Future aid programs will go beyond that, the official said, focusing on sustainable efforts to set up and improve Afghan institutions.

While some aid workers may welcome that shift in focus, many Afghan officials are deeply worried. “People think they will keep cutting and then desert us,” said Sayed Habib Ahmadi, the Afghan head of the Joint Coordinating and Monitoring Board, which brings Afghan and global officials together to discuss aid priorities.

Already, Afghan officials complain that, as Mr. Ahmadi put it, “the main problem is that international donors have not delivered what they’ve pledged.” Western donors, however, say that pledged money is still available, but the Afghan government lacks the capacity to spend it efficiently and free of corruption. The result is that of budgeted American relief aid, only 18 percent to 20 percent has actually been spent over all, American officials say, with the rest still in the “pipeline.”

While that has a cushioning effect, it is also true that most aid programs in Afghanistan now operate with money from a few donor countries and agencies, rather than broad-based contributions from individuals and foundations. Many fear that as troop commitments fall, so will nonmilitary-aid commitments.

Total foreign aid to Afghanistan in 2010 was equal to the country’s entire gross domestic product, $15.7 billion, which the World Bank said in a recent report “cannot be sustained.” By 2018, the report predicted, 90 percent of that aid will be gone.

A version of this article appears in print on December 6, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Aid Agencies In Afghanistan Fear Reversals. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe